Howard Nemerov

Amateurs of Heaven Poem by Howard Nemerov

Two lovers to a midnight meadow cameHigh in the hills, to lie there hand and handLike effigies and look up at the stars,The never-setting ones set in the NorthTo circle the Pole in idiot majesty,And wonder what was given them to wonder.

Being amateurs, they knew some of the namesBy rote, and could attach the names to starsAnd draw the lines invisible between That humbled all the heavenly things to farmAnd forest things and even kitchen things,A bear, a wagon, a long handled ladle;

Could wonder at the shadow of the worldThat brought those lights to light, could wonder tooAt the ancestral eyes and the dark mindBehind them that had reached the length of lightTo name the stars and draw the animalsAnd other stuff that dangled in the height,

Or was it the deep? Did they look inOr out, the lovers? till they grew boredAs even lovers will, and got up to go,But drunken now, with staggering and dizziness,Because the spell of earth had moved them so,Hallucinating that the heavens moved.